


Five Rivers

by Relia



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: (also mild), Body Horror, M/M, Mild BDSM, it is a romance story, this is not a body horror story however
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 11:08:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29749617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relia/pseuds/Relia
Summary: He looks, Hermes thinks, like solitude at the end of a long and tiring day.  He’s beautiful, with hair that floats around his face like ocean waves, and even then, by the time Hermes meets him, his lips have already started to peel away from his teeth, pulling his mouth back in a permanent sneer.
Relationships: Charon/Hermes (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 93





	Five Rivers

Hermes is young when he first meets Charon. The boatman stands at the oar like a carved pillar, tall with a broad-brimmed hat, and Hermes thinks there’s something perfectly stately about him. This is the god that will shepherd each soul down the Styx to their eternal rest: dark as a shadow, majestic and long with the stretch of late afternoon. He looks, Hermes thinks, like solitude at the end of a long and tiring day. He’s beautiful, with hair that floats around his face like ocean waves, and even then, by the time Hermes meets him, his lips have already started to peel away from his teeth, pulling his mouth back in a permanent sneer.

“Be careful of the water,” Charon says as he pushes them off from the dock, and his voice has a raspy quality to it, like river stones sliding together. Damp, but scratchy. It makes something in Hermes’ stomach twist a little, warmly, which he should feel embarrassed about, but doesn’t.

“What’s in the water?” Hermes asks him, propping an elbow on the side of the boat and resting his chin on his hand. Learning new things delights him, and he’s surprised to find that, contrary to rumor, Charon’s amenable to a bit of chit-chat. He hopes they’ll talk some more.

( _’A dour figure,’ Apollo had said in that mournful way of his, where it was hard to tell whether he was feeling deeply moved by something, or just taking an artistic interest. ‘He follows his destiny down its tragic course, rowing steadily. May we all dance upon the Fates’ thread so obligingly, with such noble quietude.’_ )

Charon studies Hermes, silent for a while, and Hermes thinks he’s misjudged him after all — that Charon won’t actually say more. But eventually, he looks back out across the water, and Hermes sees the mists off the Lethe reflect milky in his golden eyes.

“Loss,” he says softly.

###

By the time Hermes grows comfortable enough with Charon to start making himself at home on his boat, the sorrowful Acheron has stolen the bright gold from his eyes, and left them a lacquered white, like pearls. He still sees, but the beauty of his sight is harder to decipher now: Hermes can’t tell where his gaze lands.

He never smiles, his lips gone, and he speaks less often. Some of the sounds are gone from him, now, making the words more difficult. Hermes is left to wonder if he would smile, if he still could: so he does what he can to be amusing. He likes the idea that it doesn’t matter if Charon is smiling, if Hermes knows that he _would be_.

Hermes leans over to look into the water, the Acheron beckoning with the rush of salty tears. The reflection that stares back at him isn’t smiling. He bends closer to look.

Charon drags him back lightning-quick, both hands pulling on the ends of his scarf like he’s reining in a team of horses. Hermes supposes he should be flattered by the idea it takes that much strength to maneuver him — but really, the experience stirs a different emotion.

“Close enough,” Charon hisses sharply, biting on words he can still mostly perfectly form. The Fs are a little difficult, but he manages. “I told you. Careful.”

###

Charon cannot say the word ‘Hermes’ without lips. 

He can say ‘associate.’

Fine, then. Hermes isn’t really that invested in being Hermes, anyway. He can be Charon’s associate. 

It sounds closer, anyway. It’s got a possessive. 

Hermes definitely likes that.

###

By the time Hermes tries to kiss Charon for the first time, his eyelids have gone cracked and his nose is half-missing. The skin on his face — what’s left of it — is dry, and each time they pass through the waters of the wailing Cocytus, her cries shake the air. Sometimes, Hermes thinks that by the greenish light of Tartarus, he can see hairline fractures forming across Charon’s high cheekbones.

It’s quiet, sometimes, if there are no souls to ferry, and Charon’s rowing Hermes down to Tartarus to deliver a message. The caverns that encircle the river are narrow, echoing the lapping of water against their walls, and for all that the Underworld contains millions of souls, it might as well just be the two of them. In those moments, Hermes can watch Charon rowing, his powerful arms making a dancer’s rhythm through the water, and wonder everything in the world about him. Charon answers most of his questions, when he asks, but Hermes feels like he can never know enough.

When it’s just the two of them, if he’s in a good mood, Charon hums music to him.

You don’t need lips to hum. 

Charon’s hum is rich, like the first full sip of Ambrosia. Hermes wants to taste it for himself.

He tries — sidling up to Charon with a bit of a swish in his step, a little coy, reaching for his face and trying to bend Charon down, down —

But Charon stops him firmly, a huge gray hand settling over Hermes’ face to hold him back.

He splays his fingers apart, so that he can look into Hermes’ eyes, glowing white meeting deep brown. “ _No,_ ” he says with surprising volume, the word echoing around the cavern walls. Then — although the words are hard for him to say, and they don’t come out clean — he says, as clearly as he possibly can: “ _ **Hermes. Never.**_ ”

And in the space between his teeth, Hermes sees, for the first time, that there’s now a violet glow that’s taken up permanent residence at the back of his throat, and the waters of the five rivers have taken more than just his lips, his eyes, his nose. His tongue has started to go.

 _What’s in the water?_ he’d asked Charon.

 _Loss,_ Charon had told him.

He hadn’t asked whose.

Hermes understands better now, why Apollo had looked down the line of Charon’s thread and seemed so sad. He understands that the rivers are treacherous and cruel, and jealously take what they can of their boatman for themselves. He understands why Charon always steers Hermes to sit near the middle of the boat, never to drink the water, never to breathe in too much of the mist.

He’s not sure his lips are all that worth having, if they can’t ever kiss Charon’s, truthfully. If Charon’s kiss could rot them off, he thinks it would be a slow and wonderful way for them to go. But that’s not what Charon wants for him, clearly, and he’s decided already: he’s not Hermes. He’s Charon’s associate — the possessive very much intended.

So instead, he smiles and asks: “What _can_ I do, then?”

Charon’s hand on his hip is an answer.

###

Eventually, there are no more words at all. Hermes learns to understand him in a new way: not by the sounds of a tongue, or the movement of lips, or even the twitching of eyelids long gone. No, it’s different things now. Sometimes it’s the clench of a hand, or the way he tilts his head up toward the stalactites while he thinks. Sometimes it’s a gift pressed into Hermes’ satchel when he’s not looking, or a fingertip smoothed fondly over Chelly’s head, or a chiding pinch to Hermes’ backside when Charon’s had enough of him playing coy. Sometimes it’s a soft groan, when Hermes takes him deep into his mouth, and Charon spills down the back of his throat with hands gripped carefully behind his wings. Sometimes it’s words traced on his skin in ambrosia, a message directly from Charon to his most devoted recipient.

It’s enough. It’s enough to know.

###

One day — all too soon — the Phlegethon takes its due. The river of flames has scorched his hands down to leather, making them hard, and they scratch at Hermes’ skin.

He can still row; he’ll always be able to row. But his fingers are brittle now. They leave marks.

Charon sees them and is furious. He doesn’t want to touch Hermes anymore. He bunches the front of Hermes’ chiton in his hand and pushes him back to the end of the length of his arm. He turns his head away, the broad brim of his hat hiding an expressionless face from view.

“Hhhhhnnnnaaggggh,” he moans out raggedly, as though to say that this is something for which he desperately needs words, even though he can’t have them anymore. Hermes can hear the faint clinking of obols on Charon’s clothes, stirred because he’s trembling with frustration, or whatever other emotions he’s feeling.

 _It’s over,_ Hermes thinks with horror. _He’d end it, just like that._ The thought is unbearable. Charon can’t — he _can’t_. They’re just scratches. Hermes isn’t made of glass, he can stand to be a little scratched.

He can’t accept this.

Hermes reaches for Charon’s leathery hand, gripping his shirtfront, and tries to clasp it between both of his own. Charon, seeing what he’s doing, tries to pull away: but though Charon is strong, he’s not nearly as strong as Hermes is fast. No one’s as strong as Hermes is fast. Hermes laces their fingers together and holds on tight — and in a small boat, there’s nowhere else for them to go.

“Don’t take this from me,” Hermes begs him, clutching on like it's his only chance. “Not this too.”

He bends his head down, slow as can be, and presses his mouth to each rough knuckle of Charon’s rocky, burned fingers. They’re warm. Charon’s the warmest thing in his life.

“Charon,” he says. “Please. Let me have this.”

Charon wavers. Charon’s never wavered. Maybe, Hermes thinks, Charon really does love him.

“Because you love me,” he tries. “Because I love you. But let me have this.”

And maybe, just maybe, the five rivers don’t take everything. And maybe, just maybe, Charon doesn’t dance upon the Fates’ thread quite so obligingly as Apollo thought — because Charon raises his ruined hand to rest it against the side of Hermes’ face, and Hermes leans into it.

###

You don’t need lips to hum. You don’t even need a tongue.

The five rivers echo hungrily into the darkness, rocking their eternal warnings against the sides of Charon’s boat. Within it, there are only two of them. Charon and Hermes.

They’ve never kissed. 

Charon doesn’t let them do that.

But they hum.


End file.
